History of Education Society

The History of Education Society is a professional organization for American historians of education founded in 1960. Its journal is the History of Education Quarterly.

The History of Education Society emerged as the field of the history of education began to coalesce. Early work in the field began in the late 1800s, but became an academic discipline in the early 1900s with the work of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley and Paul Monroe. Teachers in training were then taught the institutional history of American public school education, particularly as "an inevitable outcome of consensus forged by a democratic society". In 1948, the National Society of College Teachers of Education began a History of Education Section. The Section published the History of Education Journal. Scholars argued over the field's aims throughout the 1950s. The Ford Foundation formed a Committee on the Role of Education in American History in 1957 to create a history of education from a history of public schools, an effort to make the field more scholarly.

The History of Education Society was founded as an independent organization in 1960, succeeding the Section. With its creation came legitimacy for the field as academic study. In 1961, the History of Education Quarterly replaced the History of Education Journal and published the society's work. The journal operated out of the University of Pittsburgh with Ryland W. Crary as its editor and later moved to New York University, Indiana University, Slippery Rock University, and the University of Illinois. Other editors have included William J. Reese.

The society was influenced by revisionism in the 1970s, which encouraged its historians to debate American public education's societal and individual roles in the society's journal and annual meetings. Towards the end of the century, the education history field grew to include histories of the family, media, and religion.